I've toyed around with linux and I like it, but I have always run into driver issues when I try and have it as the only OS on a laptop. So I was thinking I'd buy a factory ready linux laptop. The places that I found to buy an ubuntu laptop are dell, system76 and ZaReason. Is there anywhere else? I'm a little surprised that they are as much or more than windows pcs with the same specs. I thought the free OS would help keep the cost down. I'm trying to avoid spending $100 - $200 on a 5 year old windows PC and installing linux. But if that would give me the same result as the $799 Ubuntu Dell, then I'm not going to be stuborn about it. If there is a reason to spend more, I will. I just want to know the right way to go about this and see where the cutoffs are for cost and performance.

Today, Linux runs on about anything.If you have an recent Nvidia or AMD graphics card you may have to install a proprietary driver.The Intel graphics driver works very well out of the box, watch out for dual graphics setups, they are difficult to set up in Linux (as well as in Windows).You could look for a windows xp laptop, they have no free upgrade to windows 10, and are usually cheap to find.Linux Mint (Ubuntu based) is the easiest, and best supported linux system.You should also look in the ubuntu forums, a lot more help can be found there.

GF, Thanks for this response. I ended up just getting my moms dell inspiron which is just a few years old and has decent specs. After my experiences from 5 years ago, I wasn't even going to try something that didn't have drivers factory installed. This is going great.